Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Ron Wayne, who sold his stake in Apple Inc. two weeks after founding it with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, said he knew the company would be a rollercoaster and also very successful.
“They were absolute whirlwinds aside from the fact they were intellectual giants, which I recognized, and it was like having a tiger by the tail; you can’t hang on and you can’t let go,” said Wayne, 77, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “If I’d stayed with them, I was going to wind up the richest man in the cemetery, so I figured it was best for me to go off and do other things.”
Jobs, who passed away Oct. 5 at age 56, started showing off his computers with Wozniak at the informal Homebrew Computer Club in 1975. Wayne, a colleague of Jobs at games maker Atari, drew on his own business experience to offer them advice and was a co-founder when Apple was established on April 1, 1976.
“I was very, very happy to participate with him for the thrill and excitement of being part of something that was really possessed of enormous promise and something that I felt was going to be very, very successful,” Wayne said. “I also felt it was going to be something of a rollercoaster which, since I was 20 years older than these guys I felt I was perhaps getting a little too old for.”
Less than two weeks after its founding, Wayne sold his 10 percent stake. Jobs went on to build Apple into the world’s most valuable technology company, now worth $350 billion.
‘Modest Question’
“They understood why I was pulling out, I had other interests and there was a modest question of liability, since it was a company and not a corporation, that if the thing blew up, I was going to be left to the $15,000 obligation that I had no idea how I was would satisfy,” Wayne said. The failure of his own business venture a few years earlier informed his decision to pull out of Apple, he said.
Jobs himself left Apple Computer Inc. in 1985 after a dispute with the board and then-Chief Executive Officer John Sculley. He returned to the company in 1996 after the new company he founded, Next Inc., was bought by Apple.
Upon his return, Jobs introduced the iMac before moving into consumer electronics with introduction of the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Those products combined now total more than 70 percent of the company’s revenue, prompting it to drop the “Computer” in its name in 2007.
Wayne stayed on as an adviser to the company after selling his stake, helping design its logo and computer cabinets. He described the loss of Jobs as “incalculable.”
“With so much potential ahead of him and so much creativity, we can only imagine what might have come out of his mind had he had the 20 years extra of life that I’ve had.”
Source: www.businessweek.com
“They were absolute whirlwinds aside from the fact they were intellectual giants, which I recognized, and it was like having a tiger by the tail; you can’t hang on and you can’t let go,” said Wayne, 77, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “If I’d stayed with them, I was going to wind up the richest man in the cemetery, so I figured it was best for me to go off and do other things.”
Jobs, who passed away Oct. 5 at age 56, started showing off his computers with Wozniak at the informal Homebrew Computer Club in 1975. Wayne, a colleague of Jobs at games maker Atari, drew on his own business experience to offer them advice and was a co-founder when Apple was established on April 1, 1976.
“I was very, very happy to participate with him for the thrill and excitement of being part of something that was really possessed of enormous promise and something that I felt was going to be very, very successful,” Wayne said. “I also felt it was going to be something of a rollercoaster which, since I was 20 years older than these guys I felt I was perhaps getting a little too old for.”
Less than two weeks after its founding, Wayne sold his 10 percent stake. Jobs went on to build Apple into the world’s most valuable technology company, now worth $350 billion.
‘Modest Question’
“They understood why I was pulling out, I had other interests and there was a modest question of liability, since it was a company and not a corporation, that if the thing blew up, I was going to be left to the $15,000 obligation that I had no idea how I was would satisfy,” Wayne said. The failure of his own business venture a few years earlier informed his decision to pull out of Apple, he said.
Jobs himself left Apple Computer Inc. in 1985 after a dispute with the board and then-Chief Executive Officer John Sculley. He returned to the company in 1996 after the new company he founded, Next Inc., was bought by Apple.
Upon his return, Jobs introduced the iMac before moving into consumer electronics with introduction of the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Those products combined now total more than 70 percent of the company’s revenue, prompting it to drop the “Computer” in its name in 2007.
Wayne stayed on as an adviser to the company after selling his stake, helping design its logo and computer cabinets. He described the loss of Jobs as “incalculable.”
“With so much potential ahead of him and so much creativity, we can only imagine what might have come out of his mind had he had the 20 years extra of life that I’ve had.”
Source: www.businessweek.com
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